APPLE iPHONE- featured
NEWS
Some
experts advise iPhone buyers to wait
If you're thinking about plunking down $500 to buy an Apple iPhone on
Friday, here's some advice: Wait a few months. Some tech experts say the
iPhone, on sale at Apple and AT&T phone stores at 6 p.m. local time
Friday, probably will be refined after Apple designers get feedback from
the first wave of users. The hefty price also could drop.
Hollywood tries to get a
grip on iPhone's impact 
Shoppers are expected to snap up 1 million or more iPhones when the sophisticated cell goes on sale Friday. But Hollywood and other entertainment providers will be looking for more than sales: They'll be watching for signs of the next mobile revolution. Video on cellphones is not new. But the new iPhone ($499 for the 4GB model, $599 for 8GB) is far more advanced than predecessors.
The most eagerly awaited cell phone ever is upon us Friday. Should you resist the iPhone's breathless hype, or take the plunge? Unless you're already standing in line outside an Apple or AT&T store, or are prepared to mug one of the first customers to come out after the 6 p.m. launch, the answer, at least for now, will have to be "let me think about it for a week or two."
IPhone accessory market set for slow start
Owners of Apple Inc.'s iPod love to trick out the music players with cases, speakers and other accessories and its upcoming wireless iPhone promises to be no different.
Accessory Makers Gear Up
for iPhone Launch
With the hype surrounding the iPhone reaching critical mass on June 29 in the U.S., Apple Inc. wants to ensure third-party vendors sell accessories engineered to work properly with its multimedia cell phone.
Seven Things to Consider
Before Buying an iPhone
Apple's iPhone isn't even for sale yet, but already, consumers are lining up to purchase the gadget. But do you really need the iPhone? Here are seven factors to consider before you buy.
Asustek Smartphone Hits
Market Ahead of iPhone
Taiwanese electronics maker Asustek Computer Inc. launched a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone with a touch-sensitive screen on Wednesday, just days ahead of the launch of Apple Inc.'s iPhone.
As the hype surrounding the release of Apple's iPhone on Friday at 6:00 pm reaches a frenzy, eager "line holders" are flocking to Craigslist.com to score a few hundred dollars.
Will Wait For Beer:
iPhone Spawns Gray Market
How badly do you want an iPhone? Would you pay US$1,500 to buy one? How about $300 for someone to wait on line for you?
How badly do you want an iPhone? Would you pay $1,500 to buy one? How about $300 for someone to wait on line for you?
Apple, AT&T announce
iPhone service plans
NEW YORK - AT&T and Apple on Tuesday said wireless service for the iPhone will range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month. The $59.99 monthly plan includes 450 minutes of voice time; a $79.99 plan includes 900 minutes; and a $99.99 plan includes 1,350 minutes.
Accessory Makers Gear Up
for iPhone Launch
Look for 'Works With iPhone' logo on iPhone accessories to make sure they are engineered to work properly with Apple's multimedia cell phone.
Stanley Sigman, CEO of AT&T Mobility, may be the envy of Apple fanboys for one reason alone: He's been testing out the iPhone for a month. He spoke with FORTUNE's Stephanie N. Mehta about his experiences with the device, and why he thinks most iPhone owners won't have buyer's remorse. Here's the second excerpt from their conversation (read the first excerpt here):
Vodafone Could Snag
iPhone Exclusive
The Britain-based wireless carrier is a good bet to win the sole rights to sell the iPhone in Europe, Credit Suisse says
VIEWS
REVIEWS
The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype
Talk about hype. In the last six months, Apple’s iPhone has been the subject of 11,000 print articles, and it turns up about 69 million hits on Google. Cultists are camping out in front of Apple stores; bloggers call it the “Jesus phone.” All of this before a single consumer has even touched the thing.
So how is it?
As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones.
Unless you’ve been in a sensory-deprivation tank for six months, you already know what the iPhone is: a tiny, gorgeous hand-held computer whose screen is a slab of touch-sensitive glass.
The $500 and $600 models have 4 and 8 gigabytes of storage, respectively — room for about 825 or 1,825 songs. (In each case, 700 megabytes is occupied by the phone’s software.) That’s a lot of money; then again, the price includes a cellphone, video iPod, e-mail terminal, Web browser, camera, alarm clock, Palm-type organizer and one heck of a status symbol.
The phone is so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese. The glass gets smudgy — a sleeve wipes it clean — but it doesn’t scratch easily. I’ve walked around with an iPhone in my pocket for two weeks, naked and unprotected (the iPhone, that is, not me), and there’s not a mark on it.
But the bigger achievement is the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because the solitary physical button below the screen always opens the Home page, arrayed with icons for the iPhone’s 16 functions.
You’ve probably seen Apple’s ads, showing how things on the screen have a physics all their own. Lists scroll with a flick of your finger, CD covers flip over as you flick them, e-mail messages collapse down into a trash can. Sure, it’s eye candy. But it makes the phone fun to use, which is not something you can say about most cellphones.
Apple has chosen AT&T (formerly Cingular) to be the iPhone’s exclusive carrier for the next few years, in part because the company gave Apple carte blanche to revise everything people hate about cellphones.
For example, once the phone goes on sale this Friday, you won’t sign up for service in a phone store, under pressure from the sales staff. You will be able to peruse and choose a plan at your leisure, in the iTunes software on your computer.
VideoMore Video »
Better yet, unlimited Internet service adds only $20 a month to AT&T’s
voice-plan prices, about half what BlackBerry and Treo owners pay. For
example, $60 gets you 450 talk minutes, 200 text messages and unlimited
Internet; $80 doubles that talk time. The iPhone requires one of these
voice-and-Internet plans and a two-year commitment.
On the iPhone, you don’t check your voice mail; it checks you. One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password — and no sleepy robot intoning, “You...have...twenty...one...messages.”
To answer a call, you can tap Answer on the screen, or pinch the microscopic microphone bulge on the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up. (When you’re listening to music, that pinch pauses the song. A double-pinch advances to the next song.)
Making a call, though, can take as many as six steps: wake the phone, unlock its buttons, summon the Home screen, open the Phone program, view the Recent Calls or speed-dial list, and select a name. Call quality is only average, and depends on the strength of your AT&T signal.
E-mail is fantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.
The Web browser, though, is the real dazzler. This isn’t some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip — much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.
Finally, you can enlarge a Web page — or an e-mail message, or a photo — by spreading your thumb and forefinger on the glass. The image grows as though it’s on a sheet of latex.
The iPhone is also an iPod. When in its U.S.B. charging cradle, the iPhone slurps in music, videos and photos from your Mac or Windows PC. Photos, movies and even YouTube videos look spectacular on the bright 3.5-inch very-high-resolution screen.
The Google Maps module lets you view street maps or aerial photos for any address. It can provide driving directions, too. It’s not real G.P.S. — the iPhone doesn’t actually know where you are — so you tap the screen when you’re ready for the next driving instruction.
But how’s this for a consolation prize? Free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on the map.
Apple says one battery charge is enough for 8 hours of calls, 7 hours of video or 24 hours of audio. My results weren’t quite as impressive: I got 5 hours of video and 23 hours of audio, probably because I didn’t turn off the phone, Wi-Fi and other features, as Apple did in its tests. In practice, you’ll probably wind up recharging about every other day.
So yes, the iPhone is amazing. But no, it’s not perfect.